[Ten Years Ago – Temple of Hollow Echoes]
He was six when the voices started.
No mark. No magic. No name.
Just... whispers.
They came at night, crawling through cracks in the ceiling. Through the floor. Through his bones.
They told him about stars. About war. About a world that used to kneel.
They called him Child of Ruin.
He didn't know what that meant.
He just wanted them to stop.
But they never did.
The priests said he was cursed.
Said he wasn't human.
They locked him away beneath the temple. Left him in the dark. Alone.
Until the seal appeared.
Not summoned.
Not inherited.
Just... burned into his skin one morning—across his collarbone—glowing black and broken.
A half-seal.
An accident.
An opening.
And from that day on, the voice got louder.
[Present – Mountainside Cave]
He stared at his reflection in a frozen pool.
His name was Kairo.
And he hated what he was.
The others had marks given to them by divine sealers.
Kairo's came straight from the god itself. Not a gift. Not a weapon.
Just a mistake.
The god inside him had no name.
Only a sound.
A low, endless hum that pulsed behind his ribs like a second heartbeat.
You will fall with them, it whispered.
Or rise alone.
Kairo touched the edge of his broken seal.
It shimmered once.
He remembered the last time he trusted someone.
A girl.
Hair like silver. A heart full of kindness.
Another Vessel.
He had warned her. Begged her to run.
But she stayed.
And when the god inside him awakened...
He couldn't stop.
She was gone.
And her power passed to someone else.
A child.
Her child?
Maybe.
He didn't know.
But sometimes, he saw her face in dreams—and heard her scream when he touched the seal.
Now three Vessels had awakened.
And they didn't know what they were carrying.
They didn't know what was coming.
But he did.
He stood.
The stars outside shimmered like cracks in glass.
He spoke softly to the dark.
"If they come for me, I'll fight."
"If they come for each other, I'll stop them."
His seal flared briefly—unstable and wild.
Then he added, quieter:
"But if I lose control again..."
He looked at his reflection one last time.
"Then kill me."
[Meanwhile – Coker's Camp]
Coker sat beside the fire, staring at the burned-out logs.
The others slept. Elira leaned on her blade, dozing lightly. Naia curled into her cloak. Violet Girl—still nameless—lay in silence, hand on her mark.
But Coker couldn't sleep.
The memory of the Fourth Vessel haunted him.
The eyes.
The pressure.
The silence.
He wasn't like them.
He didn't want to be found.
And yet…
Coker couldn't shake the feeling that they would need him.
All of him.
Even the part that was still breaking.
Far above them, in a tower of living bone, the Demon King's lieutenants gathered.
The Black Flame. The Mirror Man. The Bleeding Sister.
Each knelt as a new voice filled the chamber.
"All four are alive."
"Then the path is open," the King replied.
"Begin the Vessel Hunt. Bring them to me… alive or broken."